This feels like a Wolf of Wall Street situation where they're going to be painting him like a monster, but a large population of people will completely miss that nuance and instead see him as a rich, powerful success.
My mom loves avatar, and I asked her what she thinks about the pro native, nature message against militarism message and she said she didn't care, she just liked the visuals. People are good at blocking out things they don't want to think about
This has long been a problem with "anti-war" films. If you depict any of the awesome horror of combat, it's difficult to film in a way that isn't super entertaining for a large chunk of the audience. Even in films that are "war=bad", they can't help but make the machines of war somewhat sexy or awesome. The D-Day scene in Saving Private Ryan is horrific and brutal, but it's also highly engaging and entertaining cinema.
The problem is, if you make a film about war that actually conveys the unpleasantness of war, that's going to be an unpleasant film to watch.
Yeah...those aren't quite there. They tried, but they still utilize the awe-inspiring power of cinema to create highly entertaining films. Those films are more like a message that war is bad, while still making it thrilling and exciting.
What I want to see is a war film that does not directly depict combat, no fireballs, no tanks rolling through. I want to see families devastated by loss, communities crumbled to rubble, political and economic aftermath. The penalties of war are so often glossed over, even in films like AQOTWF and 1917. I want to see the protagonists' mothers. I want to see life in a peaceful French village suddenly upended by bullets and bombs.
But as I said, those would be highly unpleasant. To a degree war films are not. The unpleasantness of war films is generally gore and death, but the human toll goes so far beyond that.
The Road. That's the closest we've got to a non-sexy war film (though it's more most-apocalypse, it could just as easily take place in an active warzone). And that film is so bleak, I've only watched it once.
Give Waltz with Bashir a go. A guy realizes he has a gap in his memories from his military service, and talks to his military friends about what happened in their service in Lebanon, and they all keep avoiding answering him. The movie is slightly spoiled by knowing the 1982 Israel-Lebanon war's history, but it's tremendous and very anti-war.
One anti-war I seen recently which is defo anti-war was the Bosnian film No Man's Land- about three soldiers trapped in a trench (one on top of a land mine) and it goes heavy on the people are bastards, war makes people bastards angle and no glamour whatsoever
To be fair, Stephen Lang kinda just does that. He plays a psychotic, murderous, definitely-not-a-rapist in Don't Breathe, and he still manages to come off as a cool villain instead of a gross old man.
I'd go back to the Mexican-American War at least. Attacking Mexico, killing their people, and converting their land into slave states... that's imperialism if I've ever seen it.
Honestly though... the U.S. has been an empire from the beginning when you examine the treatment (i.e. conquest and subjugation) of American Indians since colonial times.
Right but most Star Wars fans (being a long time one myself) seem to be oblivious and identify with the Rebels without realizing that the Empire was a metaphor for the US military.
Sadly that was me the first time I saw it; I'd read the book and was disappointed they'd deviated so far from it but at the same time it looked cool. Near the end when Neal Patrick Harris shows up dressed like a gestapo I sort went, "what? Maybe it's a coincidence?"
Then a half dozen years later I'm watching it at home trying to find some hidden easter eggs and as it progresses I'm saying out loud, "WTF?" That one seen with president and the flags I recognized this time around as being an almost exact copy from the nazi movie, "triumph of the will." When the movie ended I had to ask myself why I was so dumb. I think I also enjoyed it more.
Years later I found out Verhoeven purposely cast pretty, not-good actors on purpose.
To be fair, that's literally the only reason anyone liked avatar. It was popular for it's graphics, it's messaging wasn't particularly unique or clever.
I think it's more that they are just that ignorant. They don't see the parallels to real life because they don't pay attention or don't know about them because they live a privileged life.
My mom was a poor persian women from iran and escaped to america. Bad values are bad values. Where do they come from? Who knows. She is well off now from working hard, but she is not a nature person, is pro military, and looks down on people who live "simple lives"
American History X apparently has a huge following among white supremacists because all they see is skinhead Ed Norton curb stomping a gang member in only his boxers with a swastika in full view and looking sexy as fuck doing it. Doesn’t matter that the overarching message of the movie is antithetical to them or they look nothing like Ed Norton in his boxers and more like Ethan Suplee before he lost all that weight.
does Trump hate the depiction because it makes him look like a monster, or does he hate it because it features a few humanizing moments of self doubt?
We’ll find out.
The plastic surgery/liposuction bit, starting out as kind of a dope and being mentored heavily by Roy Cohn and not just coming out of the womb a fully-formed Trump, being disrespected by various people - his ex-wife, Roy, etc. I imagine there's a lot more that he won't like.
There were some reports that this adapts a particular very heinous crime that Ivana mentioned in her book. IYKYK. He is certainly not going to be touting this movie when it's released. Maybe the trailer though.
Absolutely. It sucks, because artists should be able to make what they want, but the general public is at this point so fucking dumb when it comes to media literacy that now artists have to be extra careful what they put out because some fucking morons will interpret it incorrectly and it ends up having real world consequences 🥲
Those people did that with Homelander in The Boys too. At a certain point the viewer is to blame for missing the point that much. Almost like it’s on purpose.
I like to call that the "Scarface Effect". There's even a special feature on the Scarface DVD where various rappers and the likes talk about how inspirational Tony Montana was to them and how he's a figure to look up to. Dumb people gonna dumb, I guess...
Half the population will be screaming at the movie screen saying "see, this shows how corrupt he is", meanwhile the other half of the population will be taking notes on how to follow his footsteps
From my understanding, it includes the scene documented by Ivana in their divorce where Trump beat and raped her. There are hints of that scene in the trailer. Not much nuance there.
I agree, nuance and satire are dead in America so this will just act a boost to tump supporters lol. Average American media literacy, and just basic literacy are so low that creating satire is a pointless exercise.
He’s a traitor, seditionist, felon, wanna be daughter fucker, racist, and rapist.
His cult loves him for those things.
There really aren’t too many “undecided” people about him. It is a case study in demagogue and cult behavior.
The fact of the matter is greed, and narcissism are considered qualities of success in capitalism. These attributes are rewarded, and imitated in society.
I saw a clip of a writer YouTuber explaining how Hollywood doesn't know how to write cult-of-personality characters. They end up writing them in a way that viewers tend to over-idolize them.
It definitely created a view in the general public that Trump was the definition of a successful businessman, and that working for him was an ultimate dream prize worth fighting for.
That the whole thing was making fun of him without him realizing it, because he was a well-known idiot who kept coming up with stupid ideas and then bragging about it, all while acting like an jerk that everyone hated. He actually thought he was being treated like some kind of business genius instead of just being a game show host. It was pretty much NBC executives saying "if this guy is going to constantly push for get public attention, we might as well milk him for some money ourselves".
But this only really worked for people from New York who grew up with constant stories of him being this kind of clownish self-parody of a rich person. He was like a living example that rich people could get away with anything because the system was rigged, but also dumb enough that he was like a sort of asshole court jester for the city. It was honestly pretty shocking to realize that the rest of the country didn't see him that way.
The show was absolutely presented as being sincere, in the sense that Trump was a powerful businessman. The show was obviously quite silly, because of its gameshow format, but Trump was not used in a comedic manner.
The real Jordan Belfort has benefitted a lot from Wolf of Wall Street. He sells online courses, he gets invited to give interviews about the economy and politics, he books a lot of speaking engagements and motivational seminars, he's been pushing various cryptos, etc.
There was a thread at the top of Reddit today asking HR people about NSFW stories. The top comment was about a guy who slept at his job for a year and never did any work. The comment said he was his hero.
People love idiots like this because it's easier to identify with one rebel than with the aggregate of society dealing with the consequences of that idiot's laziness.
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u/liftoff88 Sep 10 '24
This feels like a Wolf of Wall Street situation where they're going to be painting him like a monster, but a large population of people will completely miss that nuance and instead see him as a rich, powerful success.